Saturday, March 23, 2013

As the issue of gun control
dominates the political stage, gun safety at home should be on the
minds of homeowners who keep firearms in their houses. There's reason to
be vigilant: Stolen guns is a big problem. Statistics show an alarming
rate of weapons being stolen during home burglaries -- and more often
than not, they never get recovered.According to the Mayors Against Illegal Guns
coalition -- which counts political heavyweights such as New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg among its high-ranking members -- as many as 600,000
guns are stolen from private homes every year. The group said on its
website that it got that figure by culling polling data on households
that own guns.The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report
last November with lower -- but still alarming -- numbers. According to
the report, 1.4 million firearms were stolen during burglaries and
other property crimes between 2005 and 2010. That's an average of
232,400 annually. Here's the most frightening part: At least 80 percent
of the stolen guns had not been recovered by the time the report was
released.

Gun-rights advocates won't even hear of it. Being required by law to do common-sense behavior like keeping guns locked up as a precaution against theft and accidents rubs them the wrong way. Their adolescent brains can't stand to be told what to do. They actually prefer that hundreds of preventable accidents take place and that hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen each year, many of which are used in crime.

What is wrong with these guys? Are they really so blinded by their bias?

SANTILLI: Do you think right now we are in the final throes of implementing communism?

NUGENT: Well, you know, let's put it in the most heartbreaking frame, shall we? And you may have never heard this before, Pete, but I want everyone to listen, even the people that might be listening that hate me and want me to shut up. Just take a deep breath and give me a second here.

The President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama went to the Vietnam Memorial Wall. He did his smoke and mirrors scam. He pretended to show respect and honor, 58,000 American warriors who died fighting communism. And then he hired, appointed and associates with communists.

If you can't see through the dishonesty and the scamming of this president with that scenario fresh in your mind, then that's literally like, I guess that would be like, I don't know, a German in 1938 pretending to respect the Jews and then going home and putting on his brown shirt and forcing his neighbors onto a train to be burned to death.

So we really have a rotten, rotten man in the White House who I am convinced hates America, hates individuality.

A Marine shot dead a male and female colleague at a Virginia base and then killed himself, in the second fatal non-combat incident involving Marines in the United States this week.

Military
investigators declined to comment on what motivated the shooting late on
Thursday, which led to a 3-1/2 hour lockdown of Marine Corps Base Quantico that extended to the pre-dawn hours on Friday.

The shooter and his victims were school staff members and active-duty Marines, base commander Colonel David Maxwell said on Friday.

Of course the gun-rights folks object to any attempts to control and regulate the personal weapons owned by servicemen.The result: record breaking numbers of suicides.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Authorities, though, say Wassell flouted the new law by taking advantage
of an increased demand for the banned assault-style weapons by adding
features to make the two rifles he sold illegal and thereby increase
their value.

He is accused of selling a Del-Ton AR-15 rifle, 299
rounds of ammunition and six large-capacity clips for $1,900 on Jan.
24, nine days after the SAFE Act was passed. That gun had an illegal
pistol grip, telescoping butt and bayonet mount. On Feb. 24, he
allegedly sold an Armalite AR-10 Magnum semiautomatic rifle with 21
rounds of ammunition for $2,600. That gun had a pistol grip.

Wassell
is employed by a utility company to check rural gas lines and well
heads, and also has a modest disability pension from his war injuries.
He reportedly enhanced the guns to earn money to help support his
family.

State police, in their complaint, pointed out that
Wassell went through with the second sale even though the undercover
officer told him he had a felony domestic violence conviction. Felons
are prohibited from owning guns.

“In this case, he sold a
dangerous assault weapon to an undercover police officer who could have
very well been a dangerous felon looking to do harm in our community,”
said one law enforcement official familiar with the case.

Wassell also allegedly was selling or attempting to sell several other guns that he had illegally modified.

“He
would get the main portion of the gun, the receiver with the barrel,
and make modifications, like adding a flash suppressor, telescoping
butt, bayonet mount, features that are currently prohibited under the
SAFE Act,” the official said.

So, he sold guns to a guy who said he was a disqualified person. That right there is enough to make him a criminal. Plus, he sold a type of gun that was recently prohibited. This is more like "bad laws be damned." But, as Ghandi said, when doing civil disobedience, one must be prepared to pay the price.

The worst thing about this case is the failure to take responsibility for his actions. It's not his fault, it's never his fault. How many times have we heard gun-rights folks saying certain laws MAKE criminals out of law-abiding citizens? That's a pathetic shirking of accountability.

The pro-gun liars are touting this as the first bust of the NY Safe Act. But, wasn't it already a crime to sell a gun to someone you suspected of being a disqualified person?

And would someone please tell us what his having been a "war hero" has to do with it. As we recently discussed, I'm not the biggest fan of former-military guys wearing their war wounds like a crown, as Elton put it. In this case he sounds like a true hero, having been seriously wounded and risking further injury to save fellow Marines, but I ask again, what does that have to do with anything?

In the so-called Gunshine State, home to the most gun permits in the
country, firearm violence has fallen to the lowest point on record.

As
state and national legislators consider gun control laws in the wake of
last month's Connecticut school shooting, Florida finds itself in a gun
violence depression. The firearm-involved violent crime rate has
dropped 33 percent between 2007 and 2011, while the number of issued
concealed weapons permits rose nearly 90 percent during that time, state
records show.

"We're happy to have facts and statistics put
into these debates, because every time they do, we win," said Sean
Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry Inc., a pro-gun-rights
advocacy group.

But other state and national data suggests a more nuanced picture of gun violence. Florida
statistics show murderers are increasingly using firearms. Between 2000
and 2005, Florida's firearm-involved murder rate never topped 3.5 per
100,000 residents. Every year since, it has exceeded that number. And in
2011, for the first time on record, guns were used in more than 70
percent of homicides.

Mirroring the 33 percent decline in gun
violence since 2007, the violent crime rate also dropped 26 percent
during that time, which could suggest other factors at play in causing
fewer criminal acts.

A last-minute meeting came together in a Minnesota House committee on
Thursday to take-up a bill from Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul) to close
the so-called gun show loophole.

The Public Safety Committee voted 10-8 Thursday on a compromise bill
that removed a universal background check provision but kept an
amendment to require background checks between private party sales at
gun shows.

Democratic Rep. Michael Paymar's universal background check bill failed
get enough support Tuesday night. Paymar eventually withdrew his bill
and said he would work with other lawmakers to find a consensus instead.

Lesch's bill was retooled with provisions to appeal to Republicans
and more conservative Democrats. Not only does it require background
checks for gun show sales, but it also expands the list of crimes that
will make a person ineligible to own a firearm or ammunition.

The universal background checks Paymar sought would not have applied
to family members selling a gun to one another, but all other private
sales -- from pistols to semi-automatic rifles -- would have required
sellers to bring the gun to a federally-licensed dealer for a background
check and license transfer fee costing $25.

It seems to me if you allow people to exchange firearms without a background check everywhere EXCEPT at the gun show, you've accomplished absolutley nothing.

MONTEGO BAY, St James — PASTOR of the Granville Seventh-day Adventist
Church, Charles Brevitt, has called on the United States Government to
contain the trafficking of illegal guns into the island with the same
fervour with which they are insisting that the Jamaican Government
control the lottery scam and the illegal narcotics trade.

"They are allowing guns to leave up there (US) and come down here. We
feel that reciprocity ought to be the order of the day. We will control
scamming, they must control guns," the tough-talking clergyman charged.

"We don't make guns in Jamaica, we don't have any gun factory in the
Caribbean, so in the same way that the Americans are literally holding a
gun to our heads to control scammers and to control drug dealers, we
must ask them to help us to control the flow of guns into our country."

Last week, at the US Senate Special Committee on Ageing's hearing into
the lottery scam, senators called for the extradition of Jamaican
lottery scammers.

They argued that enough was not being done by the Jamaican Government to stamp out the illegal practice.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Thursday that to be effective any gun-control bill that passes his chamber must include universal background checks, an embattled centerpiece of the White House's bid to curb gun violence.

Reid voiced hope that an elusive bipartisan deal can
soon be reached to require virtually all firearm purchasers to be
screened for criminal records and possible mental health problems. Republicans have voiced concerns that a proposed
record-keeping provision in private sales could lead to registration,
something that gun-rights groups have long opposed.

But Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said in a statement: "In
order to be effective, any bill that passes the Senate must include
background checks."

Federally registered gun dealers are required to
conduct such background checks, but about 40 percent of guns are
purchased from private sellers who have no such obligation.

Earlier this week, Reid acknowledged that there is not enough support in the Senate
to pass another key part of Obama's drive to curb gun violence - a
proposed renewal of a ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons.

I'd be quite pleased if the AWB failed as long as universal background checks became law. After that another bill to address the high-capacity magazines would make it just about perfect.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I
write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral
consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and
power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make
it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans,
along with millions of my fellow citizens,along with hundreds of
millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and
what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each
guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder,
including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow
veterans—whose future you stole.

Although I agree with his accusations of former-President Bush and former-Vice-President Cheney, I couldn't help but think there was a bit of self-exoneration in the letter. After all, HE volunteered for service. HE allowed the Bush lies to suck HIM in. HE was the dupe.

This is something that is completely lacking in veterans in general. Usually, after serving their time, they assign noble motives to their decision to enlist where there really were none. Most joined out of economic need. Others to get away from family and home town situations, but afterwards they love to pawn themselves off as patriotic heroes.

You can tell this is true because the upper-middle class and the upper class of Americans is almost completely unrepresented in the military.

These guys are like two bullshit-artists blowing smoke up each others asses.

I loved what Colion said, "It was love at first shot." This is what happens to many insecure and frightened men who suddenly find the cure to their lack of empowerment. Immediately afterwards they construct elaborage justifications for gun ownership like "I could probably take on one guy, but two or three or four." They actually convince themselves that it's a serious possibility that they'll be attacked someday by "two or three or four" guys and having the gun will save the day.

The real reason of course is the feeling of empowerment the gun gives them. It compensates for a psychological inadequacy.And once experienced, they'll go to any length to maintain it.

Now, that wouldn't be so bad except for the down side. People should be able to own whatever fetish items of talismen they want to feel whole, but with guns it's not so simple.

Gun accidents are not the statistical anomaly the gun fanatics keep saying. Besides the hundreds of deaths that occur each year, there are many times that who are seriously wounded. These are the direct result of gun proliferation.

Even worse is the gun flow into the criminal world. Through various means, lawful gun owners are the source of almost all the guns used in crime. The more diffuse gun ownership is, the greater the gun flow is into the black market.

They were allegedly alarmed by a Facebook photo of Josh Moore, aged
11, holding a .22 rifle, and they allegedly wanted to get very near him.

The photo had been posted by his father, Shawn, to Facebook. It
showed Josh, in his camouflage outfit and rather bright sneakers.

Shawn Moore told his story to a forum on the Delaware Open Carry Web site.He said he received a text from his wife that police and alleged
members of the Department of Youth and Family Services had paid their
home a visit. It was, allegedly, not a social call.

Indeed, he posted a picture of police in what he describes as "tactical gear."

He says the authorities demanded to enter the house in Carneys Point,
N.J., and check his guns. His lawyer, on a cell phone speakerphone, was
privy to all the discussions.

Moore insisted that he wouldn't open the safe where his guns are kept--
as no warrant was allegedly presented to him -- and that a lady from the
Department of Youth and Family Services refused to identify herself.

Wearing a T-shirt with "killer" scrawled across it, a teenager cursed
and gestured obscenely as he was given three life sentences Tuesday for
shooting to death three students in an Ohio high school cafeteria.

T.J. Lane, 18, had pleaded guilty last month to shooting at students
in February 2012 at Chardon High School, east of Cleveland.
Investigators have said he admitted to the shooting but said he didn't
know why he did it.

Before the case went to adult court last year, a juvenile court judge
ruled that Lane was mentally competent to stand trial despite evidence
he suffers from hallucinations, psychosis and fantasies.

Sen. Pete Brunstetter, R-Forsyth, has introduced a bill that would
change the law that allowed a man to open fire inside a Walmart without
incurring a felony charge.As it stands, it is a felony to fire
into a building but only a misdemeanor to fire a weapon once inside,
Brunstetter said. Senate Bill 124 would add make it a felony "to
discharge a firearm within any building, structure, motor vehicle, or
other conveyance, erection, or enclosure with the intent to do harm or
incite fear."The bill was spurred by the case of Justin Ross
Murphy, who was caught on surveillance video in October 2012 opening
fire in the electronics department of the Kernersville super store.
Under current law, Murphy was charged only with a misdemeanor,
Brunstetter said, and was allowed to continue carrying a gun.

The gun-rights fanatics who oppose any and all restrictions on firearms ownership and use should be proud of themselves for this one. I can't want to hear their justification.

The owner of the guns who probably had them under his pillow and in the night-stand drawer should be in jail. That's the source of the guns. That's where they passed from the possession of a law-abiding gun owner to the hands of young criminals.

Charging the girl with homicide seems a bit exaggerated, don't you think. She did what thousands of lawful gun owners do all the time, forget the one in the chamber. That's negligence, not murder.

The head of the department of corrections in the US state of Colorado has been shot dead at his home, authorities say.

Tom Clements, 58, was shot on Tuesday evening as he was
called to the front door of his home near the city of Colorado Springs,
officials said."We know of his position and realise that it is a possible motive for
a crime such as this," the El Paso County Sheriff's office spokesman
told the newspaper."It's a quick, rapidly evolving investigation."Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper appointed Mr Clements to
the post in 2011. The prisons chief had previously worked for more than
three decades in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Reuters/Reuters - U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden talks before U.S.
President Barack Obama signs the Violence Against Women Act while at the
Department of Interior in Washington, March 7, 2013. REUTERS/Larry Downing

Vice President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the Obama administration would continue to press for an assault weapons ban as part of gun control legislation despite a serious setback on the issue earlier this week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged on Tuesday that there was not enough support for the ban in the Senate, meaning it would fail when gun control legislation comes to the floor of the chamber next month.

Biden, who has led President Barack Obama's push for tighter gun regulations, said he was undeterred.

"We are still pushing that it pass," Biden told NPR in an interview, according to its website.

"I believe that the vast majority of the American
people agree with us, the vast majority of gun owners agree with us,
that military-style assault weapons are — these are weapons of war. They
don't belong in the street," he said.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

--(Ammoland.com)- Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.
If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would
make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s
parallel logic.

However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns,
then it would make sense to license writers and register printing
presses. That would be parallel logic too. But we don’t do that, because
that doesn’t make sense.

That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.

So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most
reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many
support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,”
get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and
carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or
else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering
freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate
purpose in America. That’s why.There’s also the small point that writing down your name, or my name, in an FBI file somewhere, when we buy a firearm (or write an essay) lacks a crime-fighting component, and in fact focuses in the opposite direction.

I wish I had a Mexican Peso for every time one of the gun-rights folks used the car comparison to try and make their biased and silly points. I'd be able to buy me a nice hacienda south of the border where the living is easy.

But now that the argument has been successfully turned against them, concerning registration and licensing, they've come up with this. Licensing gun owners and registering guns the way we do car owners and cars only makes sense if we also license writers.

Does that make sense to you? Isn't that the same thing as bringing the 1st Amendment into the discussion about limiting the 2nd? We're not talking about writers and we're not talking about the 1st Amendment.

In other words, in order to claim that one comparison is wrong they introduce another. Why can't these people just say what they mean?

When we posted this story before my only observation was that it took so long to charge the responsible person. Now something else of interest has come up.

Xiong, 31, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and child
endangerment, both felonies, three weeks after his 2-year-old son,
Neegnco Xiong, was killed on Dec. 5.

Charges say Xiong had eight guns in
the two-bedroom home at the time the 4-year-old was
playing with the gun, which had been stashed between the bed and the
mattress in his bedroom.

Xiong and his wife were on the first floor of
the home preparing lunch when the gun went off. They found Neegnco on
the upstairs bed and his 4-year-old brother under the bed. A 5-year-old
son was at kindergarten at the time, while a 1-year-old was asleep in
the children’s bedroom.

Police said the safety device was missing from the loaded semi-automatic pistol used in the shooting.Xiong, a vocational rehabilitation counselor in
St. Paul, had a permit to carry the firearm, but he said he could not
take the gun to work, so he tucked it into the bed.

You spotted it too, didn't you? Although not your typical looking gun nut, Mr. Xiong had a concealed carry permit. I sure hope someone's keeping track of these guys, they're a lot more dangerous than we first tought.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Caleb A. Gordley, 16, was killed inside his neighbor's Sterling, Va.,
home early Sunday morning. Gordley was a junior at Park View High
School, and played for the school's varsity basketball team. (Courtesy of Shawn Gordley)

The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office says Caleb A. Gordley, 16, was shot by the
owner of the home on the 45900 block of
Pullman Court around 2:30 a.m. The house's alarm sounded, and the homeowner found
Gordley on the stairwell, police say.

Gordley, a Park View High School student, died on the scene. The homeowner's name
has not been released.

The sheriff's office says Gordley lived on the same street where the shooting took
place, and that they believe he entered the home through
a window in the rear of the home.

Gordley had apparently been drinking, and a Twitter account that appears to be his
did post about a party happening Saturday night.

Shawn Gordley, the teen's father, made his comments on Twitter:

This one could very well be another murder disguised as a DGU. Being a drunk 16-year-old and entering someone's house does not merit death. But you won't hear that from the frightened and fanatical gun-rights advocates. To them, the downside of hesitating is too much. They shoot to kill as soon as someone dares to violate their sacred boundaries.

And naturally once the delinquent kid is dead, there's only the home owners side of the story which always includes that he felt threatened. What he usually feels is outrage and anger that some punk would dare to do something like that. He shoots without making any effort to determine if his life is really in danger and he does so totally justified by the law and all the other self-righteous castle-doctrine proponents.

Montcalm County Sheriff’s Deputies are investigating after a man was shot in the leg with a .45 caliber handgun.

Deputies say the eighteen year old Carson City man, along with a
twenty-three year old Carson City man, were disassembling their weapons
in a Crystal Township home Saturday evening. That’s when the
twenty-three year old thought he unloaded his handgun and while
attempting to disassemble the weapon it discharged shooting the victim
in the leg.

Sheriff’s deputies continue to investigate this case and the
prosecutor’s office will review to determine if any charges will be
issued.

Does anyone really believe this young man is qualified to own guns? Why do gun-rights fanatics not want to hold their own to the simple standard of adherence to the Four Rules of Gun Safety? Why do they always make excuses for each other?

Monday, March 18, 2013

A man driving a motorized shopping cart shot an Anchorage
Walmart assistant manager during a dispute over the man's unrestrained
dog on a busy Saturday afternoon inside the Midtown store, police said.

Police
arrested the suspect minutes later. Medics rushed the victim, a man
shot once in his midsection, to a hospital in stable condition, police
said. The store was not shut down, a police sergeant said, and business
continued as usual minutes later, with many shoppers unaware a shooting
had taken place.

Police later identified the shooter as Daniel
Pirtle, 45. The victim, Jason Mahi, 33, was in surgery Saturday
afternoon, a police spokeswoman said.

Pirtle, a double amputee
with metal, prosthetic legs, came into Walmart with his service dog not
on a leash, police Sgt. Cameron Hokenson said.

Mahi is an assistant manager at the store, according to Walmart. He asked the man to leave, police said.

How dare that store manager ask the man to leave. He wasn't doing anything wrong. No wonder he ended up getting shot, he asked for it.

By the way, if the justification for Constitutional Carry is that gun owners are law abiding, shouldn't the ones who do stuff like this count as concealed carry fuck-ups? The problem is no one is counting and the gun-rights fanatics keep touting those ridiculously low percentages.

Washington State Department of Corrections

Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her
former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to
obtain a temporary order for protection.

Her former husband, Corey Holten, threatened to put a gun in her mouth
and pull the trigger, she wrote in her petition. He also said he would
“put a cap” in her if her new boyfriend “gets near my kids.” In neat
block letters she wrote, “He owns guns, I am scared.”

The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of
his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What
it did not require him to do was surrender his guns.

About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying
in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two
children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several
months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her
chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to
kill her.

For all its rage and terror, the episode might well have been prevented.
Had Mr. Holten lived in one of a handful of states, the protection
order would have forced him to relinquish his firearms. But that is not
the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part because of
the influence of the National Rifle Association and its allies.

The pro-gun argument is that hysterical women will be frivolously calling for restraining orders where they're not really needed and unfailry depriving their husbands of their god-given rights.

I say if a judge has enough evidence to order a man to stay away from his wife and kids and home, he has enough evidence to order the surrendering of weapons too.

A
line of cars snaked around the government office parking lot, down
Bendix Road and for up to half a mile along Route 108 in the late
morning and the afternoon, as people waited for hours to trade in guns
to Howard County police for crisp $100 bills.

At the end of the
day police had recovered 631 guns and at 2:30 had to start turning cars
away, officials said. The last time they tried a similar effort in 1995,
the total number of guns collected was three.

Even more than the total number of gun owners, the total number of households with guns is affected. Gun-righs fanatics love to claim the 80 million or so gun owners as their own, but nothing could be further from the truth. Most of them are either apathetic towards gun rights or actually in agreement with the gun control side of the argument.

But even more importantly, the numbers are dwindling. There's the attrition of elderly gun owners dying off as well as the ever-more-popular gun buyback programs providing a safe place for people to rid themselves of their guns and join the ranks of non-gun owners.

The result: an ever more concentrated minority which becomes ever more strident in their protestations of reasonable limitations on their gun rights.

Ruthann Sprague, with the National Rifle Association, shows Bonnie
Kristian, 24, of Alexandria, Va., foreground, how to hold the Laser Shot
at a shooting simulator booth run by the NRA at the 40th annual
Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. on
Friday, March 15, 2013. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

At NRA University, National Rifle
Association grassroots organizer Miranda Bond told a group of young
conservatives fresh from Sarah Palin’s fiery, lead-barreled CPAC speech Saturday afternoon that encouraging pro-gun friends to register to vote was a good start—and even better would be discourage “anti-gunners” from casting ballots.

“The
thing is, we don’t want the anti-gunners to vote,” she said, lamenting
the fact that President Obama was re-elected despite the NRA’s best
efforts to oust him. So, she said, students should set up voter
registration booths on campus but “put up a great big sign that says,
‘Pro-gun? Vote Here.” That will keep the gun control advocates away, she
said, because “they’re scared of guns.”

We've heard a lot in this post-Newtown moment about how California
leads the nation in gun laws. But you probably haven't heard the
unlikely story of Brandon Maxfield, a quadriplegic 26-year-old who
helped drive a notorious segment of California's gun industry toward
extinction.

"It wouldn't have happened without him," said Garen Wintemute, a UC
Davis professor of emergency medicine whose anti-gun advocacy has made
him a firearms industry nemesis.

In 1994, at the age of 7, Brandon was accidentally shot through the
neck with a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol. The pistol belonged to
Brandon's parents, who kept it in an unlocked drawer.

A 12-year-old relative had
found it, and a 20-year-old family friend, who was watching the kids for
Brandon's mother, tried to unload it. The gun discharged, grievously
wounding Brandon, who was not expected to live.

Of course you should be able to sue the gun manufacturers, which the gun-rights fanatics seem to question, but in cases of gun negligence and failure to store the gun secureley, the person or persons responsible should not go unpunished. That's what one strike you're out means.

In this case the whole family seems to have become gun control advocates, but that's not usually the case. People who prove themselves incapable of handling guns safely and are permitted to continue owning them are a danger to themselves and others.

Further to a very tedious comment thread in which TS put forth some unbelievable propositions, I did some research myself. You know I hate to do that, I prefer using my head and trying to determine what's what by logic. But, what a surprise, when I did the research, it jived perfectly with my ideas that more guns in a particular state means that state will have more murders, not just gun murders.

The reason this makes sense is because most murders are done with guns. What could be simpler?

Wichita police say a 26-year-old man has
been arrested after a 5-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head
with a pellet gun.

Wichita police Lt. Doug Nolte says the man’s 5-year-old son picked up
the pellet gun and pulled the trigger on Sunday. A pellet penetrated
the child’s skull.

Nolte says the father of the shooter left the pump-action pellet gun on a table after returning home from hunting.

The father was arrested on suspicion of offenses that include aggravated child endangerment and obstructing arrest.

You see what happened there? "Obstructing arrest" was where he went wrong. Gun fanatics can let their kids shoot themselves all day long and not get arrested, but if you mess with the police when they come by lying or hiding evidence, you're bound to end up in the pokey.

What's your opinion? He sounds like another lawful gun owner, don't you think? Anyone idiot can own one of those pellet guns, right? He could have had a concealed carry permit too, for all I know. No one checks on that.

The National Rifle Association, which is battling a
raft of gun control measures on Capitol Hill, also has an international fight on
its hand as it gears up to oppose a U.N. treaty designed to restrict the flow of
arms to conflict zones.

Negotiations open Monday in New York on the Arms Trade Treaty,
which would require countries to determine whether weapons they sell would be
used to commit serious human rights violations, terrorism or transnational
organized crime.The gun lobby fears that the treaty would be used to regulate
civilian weapons. Human rights activists counter that it would reduce the
trafficking of weapons, including small arms such as the ubiquitous AK-47
assault rifle, to outlaw regimes and rebel groups engaged in atrocities against
civilian populations.“This treaty is a common-sense alignment of the interests of
governments, law-abiding citizens and individuals all over the world, who
deserve the right to live free from harm,” said Michelle Ringuette, chief of
campaigns and programs at Amnesty International USA. “Any step toward
restraining the illicit sale and transfer of weapons used to commit horrific
crimes is a good move forward, and the world could use a lot more steps in the
direction of ending human rights abuses.”